This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Brampton will not name staffers who received $1.25M in secretive payment scheme

The Brampton audit committee on Tuesday accepted a staff recommendation to immediately abandon the system of bonus payments, but did not call for an investigation into any possible criminal wrongdoing.

Brampton City council stopped short of calling for a criminal investigation after an audit report this week revealed $1.25 million in payments to non-union employees made without council approval. (Rick Madonik / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Peter CriscioneBrampton Guardian

Tues., June 6, 2017

A first-term councillor alarmed by the conduct of some former Brampton senior staffers on Tuesday demanded the names of those who were behind and benefited from a secretive program that paid out $1.25 million to non-union employees going back to 2009.

“It’s disturbing to read some of the things that are written in here. What it shows is a culture of misbehaviour that we had (at city hall) previous to this,” said Councillor Gurpreet Dhillon, referring to a report delivered to the audit committee Tuesday that revealed a bonus payment system that handed out discretionary salary increases to 167 non-union city employees without council approval or knowledge between Jan 1, 2009, and May 14, 2014.

The payments, called Outside Policy Requests, had become common among the city’s non-union staff, the audit report said. City officials described OPRs as “discretionary salary increases determined by the operating department heads” that were “outside of council-approved policies” and documented procedures, the report said.

Payments ranged from as little as $123 to more than $95,000, the audit report said. A total of $316,000 was paid to just eight employees.

The report also revealed that OPR payments to non-union staff could not be tracked because there was a “lack of coding” that would have allowed internal controls to track and monitor the secret bonuses.

Article Continued Below

The objective of OPR, according to previously undisclosed documents unearthed in the audit report, was to “align the salaries within the respective grades to achieve fairness and equity.”

On Tuesday, committee members accepted staff’s recommendation to immediately abandon the practice, but did not call for an investigation into any possible criminal wrongdoing. Staff also indicated that names of staffers, past and present, involved with the OPR program would not be disclosed to councillors.

“We promised change in this council and I think we’ve done well. But we still have to ensure we don’t revert back to the culture of the old ways,” said Dhillon. He added his support to Mayor Linda Jeffrey’s renewed calls for outside oversight of the cities practices, which was recently rejected by some members of council.

“This is pretty evident and pretty clear that things weren’t working when you have $1.25 million in staff bonuses that could not be tracked,” Dhillon said.

On Monday, asked whether she would call for a police probe into the payments, Jeffrey wrote in an email that “this is at best serious negligence, and at worst corruption,” adding that she “will continue to explore any and all avenues available to us. Respecting the taxpayers and residents of Brampton is my highest priority.” Jeffrey is not part of audit committee and did not attend the Tuesday meeting.

Regional Councillor Gael Miles, who has been on council for three decades and is the former budget chair who directly oversaw city budgets during the period of the audit report, defended the practice, though she said she had never been informed about the way it was being carried out.

“My reading of the report was if someone’s pay was not where a commissioner felt it should be, they could take a look at that salary and make an adjustment,” said Miles. “It wasn’t a slush fund that was set up to give bonuses to staff it was a policy to adjust salaries and wages that they felt were outside a pay scale range.”

Miles said she is “very concerned” by the audit findings and criticized former staff for “shaking” her confidence, but argued that the practices under question were not illegal.

Tuesday, Miles said council was unaware of the dealings and there were no mechanisms in place that would have warned elected officials about the payments.

“Having delegated at several budget meetings, I was often surprised that a city’s annual budget could be deliberated and approved in a matter of a day or two,” said Chris Bejnar, co-chair of the group Citizens For a Better Brampton, which has criticized Miles and council for how they scrutinize budgets presented by staff.

“How are we to know, as members of council, if there are no red flags?" Miles asked Tuesday. "We need to have the trust and the confidence that our staff are doing the right thing.”

Regional Councillor Elaine Moore, chair of the audit committee, called revelations of the unknown practice “scary.”

“Even scarier is that usually there is someone usually whispering in our ears,” she said. “This was invisible, not just to members of council but to even staff within the organization aware of this practice taking place.”

The Brampton auditors said that the bonuses were not authorized under relevant rules and that over time OPR “requests were approved for reasons beyond its initial intention.” They added that with no oversight or formalized processes “the OPR practice became mismanaged.”

The report notes that “favouritism” was listed as one of the top 10 reasons to allow an OPR bonus.

The auditors noted a sudden drop to almost no OPRs after 2014, the year of the last municipal election. The city stated that there was no OPR line item in the annual budget. It also noted that council approval for the OPRs was not sought.

Moving forward, staff said there would be another audit on the city’s compensation structure.

Regional Councillor Martin Medeiros joined Dhillon in calling for outside oversight. “I am just concerned that we don’t sweep this under the rug."

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com